GREER BLACK PRUDHOMME DRAGSTER

Drag Racing Story of the Day!Fuller's Famous Greer-Black-Prudhomme Story

By Kent Fuller

First met Stuckey when he came to town with Bob Sullivan's car. I was pretty impressed with that act. I think now that he claimed more responsibility for that car than he actually had. He claimed to be a very good body man and if he had a good chassis, he could make a neat looking car. I wanted to build my car at the time but didn't have any money for pipe, so we made a deal that he would buy tubing for two cars in exchange for my doing a frame and front end. I didn't mount the engine or rear end and he went home. I started building my car, ZPF, and got Wayne Ewing to build the body. That was right after he helped me with the Magwinder. Stuckey got back to town a few months later with a completed car and ran Half Moon Bay. Impressed everyone up North and started me in the fuel dragster business.

I'd only built gas dragsters and roadsters to this point. Got calls from Gotelli and Masters and Richter right away, I'm now in the fuel dragster business. Owning to the fact that Stuckey had a sign on the car that said "Chassis by Fuller" and talked me up pretty good. He was a hell of a salesman. Car was sold to Cash Auto Parts to help pay hospital bills. Bay area guys had a benefit race for him. He went home to recoup for awhile. By the time he came out again, Louie Senter had the car. Stuckey planned on running the car with Louie and I didn't hear any of that story except Stuckey said, those guys down there didn't know what they were doing. By this time, ZPF has won Bakersfield and I had quite a few fuel cars running.

Stuckey was still going being my best salesman and I was planning on building him another car to be my representative. Prudhomme and I were having trouble with Zeuchel's ego and had broken up the ZPF partnership. I was going to put 2 unblown fuel Chevys side by side in the car and had figured out a really slick driveline where I wouldn't have to alter the looks of the car. Chet Herbert said he would sponsor the engines so I bought two sets of heads and started on the driveline. Sent the heads over to Dick Harryman to get ported. He got them all done very quickly and sold them to someone when he ran short of money. Hardly pissed me off at all. By this time, Louie had sold the car to Greer and Stuckey was going to run it for them.

Back under the heading of "loose lips sink ships," Stuckey was still out at the shop telling me all his plans. Keith and (I think) Dan Broussard came and took me to lunch, said they were leery of Stuckey and what could I tell them about him. What I said was "I thought he was my factory rep" Keith said if he was, he wasn't a good one and told me a few disparaging things Stuckey had said. Keith didn't want to do any chassis work and still thought chassis were some mysterious thing. I was looking for a place to park Prudhomme so I could get him back after I got my car done. He was back hanging around with Ivo and that was not to my advantage at the time.

Stuckey had told me he was going to let Keith build the engine but was going to slip in his own cam, time it and not let Keith know what it was. He thought he was the only one in the country that could make the chassis work by changing the timing, in this case it was 8 degrees retarded. When I mentioned this to Keith, he got as pissed off as I had ever seen him so we made a deal to do the chassis work for nothing if he would give Prudhomme a ride.

I was sharing a shop with Wayne Ewing when they brought the car out. I started on the chassis work and they made a deal with Wayne for the body. What was different about my car was the mid section and motor mounts. Keith wanted a standard Donovan rear end so he could use the billet axles. I cut the top rail out from the front motor mount to the rear end upright. The original way was the Donovan engine plate with the ears out the side so to pull the engine, you had to take off the clutch can, clutch flywheel, engine plate, then you could remove the motor. My way was to make an aluminum engine plate that was a body former-firewall and rear engine mount. It hung over the top frame rails and was easy to take out with four small bolts. I put a new top rail engine plate upright, rear end mounts, and motor mounts. The chassis went next door to Wayne.

By this time, Ansen and Pink decided to buy the ZPF car and I decided to move North because of a lot of promises from Jim McClennan. Just eat a piece of pie in the sky and things will be wonderful. This is the time for the story of Stuckey tracing my flame cut patterns and going into business with Ivo happened that I've told too many times and I'm not going to do it here. I had moved North by the time Wayne got the body done.

I drove down to help put the car together and we took it out to Pomona for the first time. The only two parts left on the car that Stuckey had anything to do with were the streamline tubing draglink and steering wheel. The draglink broke first time out because Stuckey had made it out of two short pieces of tubing welded in the middle and you will notice in the picture of the first time out the black tape on the draglink where it broke. Made him a new round tubing draglink but I could never get him to take the ugly steering wheel off as that was Prudhomme's favorite thing in drag racing. Probably still is.

Stuckey's last comment to Black as he is driving out of town was "you have really screwed up and nobody will ever hear of this car again." And that is more than enough of this story. Make a copy and pass it on so I don't have to tell it again.

I see them on Ebay all the time. Also see them at Hot Rod Reunion at Famoso.You'll have to do some leg work to find Tom West.Here's an article from Phil Burgess about Tom West.Contact him here for startershttps://twitter.com/nhraphil